Team: 3
School: Eldorado High
Area of Science: Cyber Security (Computer Science)
Interim: Keeping Personal Assistant Devices Secure at Home: The Google Home Mini (GHM)
Team Number: 3
Team Members: Nancy Avila navilad.735@gmail.com
Candis Canaday candisc101@gmail.com
Gwenevere Caouette gweneverecaouette@gmail.com
Priscila Flores precelaflores10@gmail.com
Kyreen White hellu.kittycat2004@gmail.com
Teacher(s): Ms. Lunsford lunsford@aps.edu
Mrs. Glennon kglennon25@gmail.com
Sponsor: Mrs. Glennon kglennon25@gmail.com
Mentor(s): Richard Oliver
Tyler Brynn Charity
Areas of Science: Cyber Security (Computer Science)
Definition of the Problem: As of 2019, more than 26.66 Billion IoT devices have been active (Letić). Along with the development of this technology has come the threat of hackers seeking personal information from unsuspecting users of these devices. Since consumers do not have information about what is going on with their device’s privacy and security, there is a large amount of the unknown. One may have to give up some personal information and security to use the device’s luxuries. What can be done to maximize the security of devices such as the Google Home Mini (GHM)?
Our Progress: Our team has started to research the security of IoT devices. As for our research, we have been reading a book titled The IoT Hacker’s Handbook: A Practical Guide to Hacking the Internet of Things and learning about the different risks that the GHM is susceptible to. With our research, we have focused on understanding the following topics: IoT vulnerabilities, the Google Home Mini, the beginning steps to hacking, IoT security, Firewall, and what makes the GHM vulnerable. We have also begun to work on our code, and we have talked to a mentor about the methods and code languages we should use to develop the code that will work towards our goal. Our mentor, Brynn, who attends New Mexico Tech is helping us to understand the way firewalls work. We will continue to learn from our mentors as well as increasing research and coding.
Problem Solution:
We are focusing on how to construct what kind of test we would like to do. We are mainly focusing on voice recognition and how we are going to make that more secure. We want to see how we can make voice recognition more secure, but haven't decided on what the solution will be. At the moment, we are trying to understand the test we could do that would benefit us most. We will import our data into a spreadsheet to analyze. Two team members, Kyreen and Candis, own Google Home Minis. Candis owns the older model HOA purchased in November 2017 and Kyreen owns a newer model H0A, manufactured November 2019, 1st Generation. Using their devices, we will set out test runs to see how the GHM’s voice recognition reacts to different voices and commands that are similar in sound. The phrase we will test will be “Hey Google, play some music†and “Okay Google, play some music.†We hope that our code will become a good resource for our project and be of use for others in the future.
Coding Plan: Our coding plan this year is to expand the one we started last year. We plan to use NetLogo as our coding language this year to demonstrate what it is like for a hacker to get into your wifi, through the firewall, and into all your devices. To understand this, we are using our mentor, Brynn, to help us with Kali Linux and Virtual Box, so we can understand how a firewall works and how someone can get through one. We are going to use our code to demonstrate a method that hackers used called Man in the Middle, which is when a hacker gets into someone’s wifi and is able to get information that is sent to the internet by putting themselves in the middle of this.
Expected Results: For this project, the team wants to be able to find the GHM’s vulnerabilities, how to penetrate it, and how to strengthen the fire wall. Throughout this year, we will know the GHM’s vulnerabilities and whether or not our test runs with the voice recognition have been successful. We expect that our research will allow us to get information on the GHM and it’s properties as well as thoroughly understanding the GHM as an IoT device. The team expects that their code will run to reflect on the research that we have done with the GHM as well as modeling a Man in the Middle attack. With our mentors, we expect that we will be able to take their input and put it into the project to further gather information that will help us in our goal for this project (making the GHM’s firewall stronger).
References
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Written by Alison Grace Johansen for NortonLifeLock. (n.d.). What is a firewall and do you need one? Retrieved November 30, 2020, from https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-emerging-threats-what-is-firewall.html
Mentors: Richard Oliver; Tyler Brynn Charity
Team Members:
Gwenevere Caouette
Kyreen White
Nancy Avila Do
Candis Canaday
Sponsoring Teacher: Karen Glennon